Something Anko This Way Comes…
by Aaron Wheeler
Summary: They were just two temporary teammates finishing a routine mission. What could possibly go wrong? A/U on certain details, obviously.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: Yeah, I don't know either... It's a ways post-timeskip, if that makes it less creepy.

Something Anko This Way Comes…

Chapter One: A little touch of Anko in the night

There were times, Anko admitted to herself, that the cursed seal Orochimaru had branded into her shoulder had come in handy, allowing her to defeat opponents she'd had no business engaging, turning the tide of battle after her own chakra reserves had been depleted. In some ways, she knew she owed her continued existence to the Snake-Sanin.

Tonight, she reflected bitterly, was not one of those times.

As she'd discovered, after the first time she'd been caught in a desperate enough fix to actually use her old master's tainted gift, once you cracked that package open, you couldn't close it back up again and pretend you hadn't.

Her seal, as she'd later discovered digging through some of her former sensei's recovered research, was an incomplete, experimental version. Rather than inject so much of his own chakra into one of his numerous and expendable guinea pigs, Orochimaru had simply summoned something up from whatever the deepest darkest Hell he'd had ready access to, ripped it into ten more or less even pieces, and set about shoving them into his test subjects.

The other nine had died, in excruciating agony, over the next twenty-four hours or so. To this day, Anko sometimes wasn't sure if that made her the luckiest of them, or just the opposite.

Whatever the seal was made of, the creature had a profound appetite for chakra, the stronger the better, and certain… predilections, about how it was obtained.

Failure to feed the seal, she knew, would result in it eating most of her own chakra, little by little, until she could barely move. Recovery time, she knew from experience, could take weeks.

Also, there would be the pain. Mind-bending, body-wracking, being-trapped-in-Itachi's-Tsukuyomi-would-seem-like-a-vacation-comparitively-type pain.

She had learned, after a few mishaps, how to harvest the chakra the seal needed without having to call on the creature inside it overmuch.

Anko sighed. It wasn't as though she didn't _like_ sex, but knowing it was always tinged with an ulterior motive made it less of a joy and more of a chore sometimes. Also, the reputation she'd had to cultivate as a hard-drinking wildwoman, (or the village bicycle, depending on who you asked) was not something she'd exactly aspired to growing up.

The trouble was, her potential 'dating' pool was somewhat limited. Civilians were out. Their tiny chakra reserves tended to leave them in a near-coma for days after she fed on them. Leave too many partners hovering at death's door and eventually people would start to notice.

Her comrades presented a different problem. While they might have chakra aplenty, any shinobi worth the name would notice if lots of it inexplicably went missing. And forget about any kind of steady relationship. After a few repeat performances, somebody was bound to notice that a roll in the proverbial hay with ol' Anko seemed to leave one a lot more tired than normal for that particular activity, and then the awkward questions would start.

The brunette kunoichi shook her head. People were suspicious enough of Orochimaru's former protegee without them deciding she was some sort of… chakra-thieving succubus as well.

_Not that it was a totally inaccurate description, considering what the seal seemed to house_…

Given that she couldn't visit the same well too many times in succession, and that sometimes she didn't have time for a traditional seduction when she just needed the chakra so badly she could barely see straight, (which was sort of sad, considering a lot of her 'seductions' consisted of something along the lines of "So, you want to?") Anko had been forced to get creative. Given its responsibility for the situation, at least the thing that lived in her shoulder had decided to help, sharing what was probably a high-level kinjutsu.

As a result, for the last several years, numerous Konoha-nins had experienced what they thought were a series of very vivid, highly erotic dreams, which left them feeling oddly lethargic the next day.

In reality, Anko had snuck into their rooms, established the technique, done her thing, and escaped, leaving her targets none the wiser. She always tried to hit people coming back from missions. The last thing she needed on her conscience was somebody dying because she'd snacked on them before they went off to battle.

Mentally, Anko chuckled, allowing herself a moment's amusement despite the situation. According to her dark passenger, the technique allowed the user to transform themselves into their victim's greatest desire, making the chakra-harvest easier, and, helpfully, also much harder to trace back to the source.

A dozen people having an erotic dream would be a strange coincidence. A dozen people having an erotic dream about Mitarashi Anko… That would strain credulity.

_One of these days, I need to make some kind of record of all this, part confession and part tell-all book_. While nobody would be happy to hear what she'd been doing to them, she had a feeling a lot of her fellow shinobi would be interested in the forms she'd been wearing when she did it.

And they were definitely forms. The technique was ninjutsu, not genjutsu, her body reconfiguring itself into new and sometimes unexpected shapes for the festivities.

Since she started using this method, Anko figured she'd hit most of the high-level shinobi of both sexes in Konoha at least once.

She'd caught the visiting Jiraiya once, which had been excellent. She'd worn the body of his beloved Tsunade, _no surprise there_, and not only had the randy old goat lived up to his image, but his chakra had kept her shoulder-devil fat, happy, and best of all, quiet, for nearly three months.

When the Toad Sage died a few months later, Anko had mourned him, but with the consolation that she'd given him at least one night with the woman he'd always wanted, even if it had been sort of a cheat.

She'd appeared to Hatake Kakashi several times, wearing the body of actress Kazahana Koyuki, star of stage, screen, and several adaptations of the Icha Icha novels. She'd also fed off Maito Guy, disguised as Kakashi. _And boy had shifting back from that one felt weird_…

The one time she'd fed off Ebisu her form had been nobody she was familiar with, a buxom blond with pig-tails and, oddly, what appeared to be tattoos of whiskers on her face. He'd proven too much of a light-weight to snack on heavily, and had lost her interest quickly.

She'd once tasted Sarutobi Asuma, wearing the form of that bitch, Yuhi Kurenai. On a later hunting trip, she'd chanced to bag one of Kurenai's students, Inuzuka Kiba, and had been amused to no end to find herself morphing back into the red-eyed genjutsu specialist.

Her erstwhile companion had gorged itself on fellow Orochimaru-experiment and ex-ANBU Captain Yamato, and Anko was surprised to find herself in the body of Tsunade's oft-harassed, and, she thought, rather plain, companion Shizune. Unbeknownst to her, Yamato retained some very… vivid impressions of their encounter, which made his interactions with the Hokage's assistant highly awkward for the next week or so, particularly after he misinterpreted her innocent request to drop by her place after work and demonstrate his 'wood technique.' (Her roof needed patching)

Neji, the Hyuga branch clan prodigy had caught her passenger's fancy next, but Anko had refused to go back for another helping, no matter the provocation. Some of the things Neji's subconscious wanted to do with, or more accurately in some cases _to_, his cousin, were downright perverse, even by her own fairly jaded standards. She had been almost as surprised by that as she had been with the gigantic rack the older Hyuga sister had apparently been hiding under her baggy coat.

In a moment of pure desperation she had tried to feed off Morino Ibiki, despite very much not wanting to see what the scar-faced torturer's ultimate desire was. Inwardly, she still wished she hadn't. Having taken the guise of a small, delicate woman with mouse-brown hair, she'd still been fully clothed thirty minutes later, trying not to feel worse about her chakra-harvesting than usual. All Ibiki had done, from the moment she'd appeared, was cling to her tightly and sob into her shoulder about how much he missed her. Eventually, the creature in her seal got bored, decided that no meal was going to be forthcoming, and shut down their link, leaving their would-be target to cry himself back to sleep. Feeling extra masochistic, Anko had done some research and discovered that the woman had been Ibiki's civilian wife, who had perished when the Kyubi had stepped on her tea shop.

Anko sighed. This little trip down memory lane, counting the notches in her figurative bedpost, had been entertaining, but did nothing to help with her current problem, namely that she was going to need to feed again, soon.

She was wrapping up her third straight mission without any downtime in between, and she was running on fumes. Her intention had been to recharge the seal before leaving Konoha, but there simply hadn't been any time.

_All work and no play make Anko a dull girl_. She reflected absently.

Luckily the mission in question, a basic two-person recon patrol around the border with Grass Country, had been uneventful. Not a damned thing had happened during the entire two weeks, and she and her mission partner had exchanged maybe a dozen words a day.

Anko had hoped, fervently, that her non-corporeal free-loader would stay quiet at least until she was back in the village, especially given her limited chakra usage, but luck had not been with her. Ten miles back down the road she'd felt the familiar twinge from her seal, and had to bite back a stream of vicious curses.

When they'd hit the little crossroads town, she'd signaled a halt to their progress and announced they were stopping for the night.

He'd given her one of his inscrutable, I-might-or-might-not-actually-be-looking-at-you stares and cocked his head to one side.

"Why?"

"Look, kid…" Anko dissembled. "I dunno who I pissed off in mission assignment, but if we trail into Konoha tonight, while the Hokage's office is still open, they'll take our report, make us stand around for an hour while they process it, and then send me out to scout some other piece of even more boring, gods-forsaken wilderness before I even have time to clean up. I want a shower, a hot meal, a drink or three, and a good night's sleep in a real bed for once. The world will not end if we tell the Hokage about all the nothing we've seen tomorrow instead of tonight."

_And if I have to sneak into your room and steal some of your chakra during the night, so be it_. Her inner monologue added. _Hell, maybe you'll even be in a better mood than you have been this whole time afterwards_.

Her companion looked across the road at the warm, inviting lights of the inn, then back at her, and shrugged, almost imperceptibly.

"As you wish." Was all he said.

Which was how Anko found herself sneaking into her temporary teammate's room at three in the morning, just looking for a little fix to take the edge off, she told herself.

With practiced stealth, she moved towards her quarry. In the gloom, she could see him laying ramrod straight and perfectly still, almost diagonally across the single bed.

_They seem to make chunin so young these days_. Anko reflected absently, conveniently forgetting that she'd received the rank at the ripe old age of twelve.

He had the blankets pulled up past his nose, leaving a narrow strip of pale face visible below the absurd little black sleep-mask he was wearing, all framed by an unruly mess of dark, spiky hair.

_This was always the trickiest bit_. Having crept as close as she dared to a sleeping shinobi, Anko's hands flew through a complicated sequence of hand seals, even as she made the final leap towards the bed.

The young man sat up even as she did, hands popping out of the blankets to form seals of his own, but much too slowly.

The kunoichi landed on her prey like a cat, hands catching his wrists, interrupting the, probably very nasty, technique he'd been about to activate. Her lips found his, the curse mark on her shoulder spinning and pulsing, completing the kinjutsu.

His body relaxed in her arms, all resistance melting away. Hoping she wouldn't have to morph into anything with extra legs, given who she was dealing with, Anko rolled her head back and waited for the change to come.

And waited.

And waited a bit more.

Frowning, she poked absently at the curse seal a couple of times, as though it was a recalcitrant piece of machinery that just needed a thump or two in the right spot to get it going. Nothing.

"I swear this has never happened to me before." She murmured, aware of the irony.

But really, this was a new and highly irritating experience. Apparently her last hope of making it back to Konoha without degenerating into a walking exposed nerve was so totally asexual that her technique wasn't finding anything to work with.

"…No, Mitarashi-san…" he murmured suddenly. "We can't possibly do that on the Hokage's desk. Why? Because Shizune-san will be back any moment now…"

_Well this just went from puzzling to super-creepy-awkward_…

Or maybe, just maybe, the reason she wasn't changing was because the greatest desire of the male she was laying on was none other than Mitarashi Anko, the loud, brash, moderately fucked-up, probably an alcoholic and definitely self-destructive, curse mark-bearing quasi-succubus herself.

With a sigh, Anko rested her forehead against his. "And what in all the Hells am I supposed to do with you now, Aburame Shino?" she asked rhetorically.

_Well, besides the obvious_…


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two: I had a dream last night…

…And it fit me like a glove.

* * *

A/N: I had the strangest dream. And you were there. And there. And… _ooooh right there_!

* * *

The second Shino opened his eyes, he wished he hadn't.

Vague feelings of comfort and contentment were immediately replaced by a searing light and a feeling like someone was shoving a pair of red-hot kuni into his eye sockets.

Eyes streaming, he reached up to yank his sleep-mask back down. Clearly, it must have ridden up somehow…

_Or come off completely_. Shino mentally corrected himself, as he was not finding the object in question anywhere on his person.

Giving up on the mask, the Aburame groped blindly for his goggles instead, which he'd left within easy reach on the bedside table, as he always did, precisely for situations just such as this…

His hand slid across the smooth, polished wood from edge to edge and back again, encountering nothing.

Repressing the urge to use a collection of words he'd learned from Kiba during their first month as teammates, Shino slumped back down and deployed a small swarm of kikai from their egress on the underside of his right wrist, directing them to look for his errant goggles.

_Something feels wrong_.

Taking a deep breath to center himself, Shino flung out a mental line to his sentry kikai stationed around the modest room. That in itself seemed to take longer than usual, and the view from their eyes confirmed what his own sense of touch was telling him: The kikai, rather than emerging in a purposeful, steady stream, were instead falling from his wrist in odd bunches, bumbling to and fro like sun-drunk bees.

Frowning, the Aburame gestured, focusing his will on the errant insects. With an apparent effort, the kikai swarm coalesced, and began a slow search for his missing headgear.

_That should not have been necessary_. Shino thought. _Why? Because I have not needed to use gesture-commands for such simple tasks since I was approximately four years old_.

After an aggravatingly lengthy search, the kikai turned up his goggles, which were inexplicably beneath the bed, and dropped them just shy of his hand. Finally fortified against the offensively cheerful sunshine, Shino was able to better take stock of his surroundings.

A puzzled frown tugged at the ninja's mouth as his situation grew more confusing with each new observation.

To whit, all the bedclothes were in a rumpled heap at the foot of the narrow bed, his pajamas, provided by the inn at what had seemed an extortionate fee, appeared to be misbuttoned, his whole body felt sticky with sweat…

…_And this light is bizarrely warm and bright for what should be just after sunrise_. He thought. _It almost looks as though I've overslept by a matter of _hours.

Shino sighed deeply. Getting sick would definitely put the final touch on what was probably the worst non-combat mission of his career in the service of Konoha, and all the evidence was pointing toward that.

A quick scan of the room revealed the alarm clock, an old-fashioned wind-up affair, likewise provided by the inn at an extra charge, lying on the floor a few feet away. Presumably, it had been knocked off the nightstand at the same time as his goggles, however that had happened.

Stretching out his arm, Shino picked up the timepiece. Upon being turned over, it happily confirmed what the light and his own sense of time were insisting, namely that it was nearly eleven in the morning. Shino resisted a sudden, childish urge to fling the misbegotten thing against the wall, and rolled to a sitting position at the edge of the bed.

This movement revealed two additional facts, both equal parts upsetting and disturbing.

The first, Shino reflected, was that his entire body _ached_. He was sore enough, and low enough on chakra, to wonder if he might have inadvertently challenged Rock Lee to a taijutsu match and then forgotten about it, possibly with the help of some blunt-force head trauma.

The second, the move having shifted the fabric of his pajama pants against certain portions of his anatomy, was that he was no longer certain all that stickiness was sweat.

The Aburame heir rested his forehead on his knees and took several deep breaths.

_Just what, in the name of the Sage of the Six Paths, did I dream about last night_?!

Obligingly, his memory coughed up a fragmentary series of images of Anko, kissing him. And then Anko doing… other things to him. Quite a few other things, actually.

This time, Shino's self-restraint snapped, and the clock in his hands went winging its way through a, fortunately open, window, followed by every single one of the words he'd learned from Kiba during their _second_ month as teammates.

Having run through his litany of profanity, the kikai-user flopped back on the bed, panting for breath.

On one hand, Shino knew that his current impulse, which was to break every single, solitary thing in the room, was a highly stupid one. He definitely would have to pay for the damages afterwards, and such an incident would only reflect badly on both the village in general, and his clan in particular. _But_, _on the other hand_, _it might also feel really _really _good_.

With an effort, the Aburame put down the idea of wanton, massive destruction, and exhaled a long, slow hiss of frustration instead.

_Perhaps this was simply an inevitable consequence of the mission_, he reflected. _Hormones, plus long, empty hours of enforced, close-quarters interaction with a vibrant, beautiful woman_…

Shino quickly tamped down on that line of thought before any more of last night's dream decided to show up for an encore.

_All of the above, combined with a rich meal and a real bed, after two weeks without either, had obviously turned my subconscious into a breeding ground_… _Er, a hotbed_... _Damn it_!

Shino shot to his feet, as if he could put some physical distance between himself and his thoughts, which proved to be something of a mistake, as his body chose that point to remind him that it felt like one giant bruise, and movement, especially of the sudden and violent variety, _hurt_.

Pain, as the future head of Clan Aburame had often been reminded, both at the hands of the Kamezuruichi clan-princess, and by Morino Ibiki during his forcibly-aborted attempt at joining ANBU, was a marvelous focusing agent. He needed to deal with the fact that, in all likelihood, he was probably in the process of becoming ill. Everything else was extraneous.

Whatever had happened last night, it was simply another symptom, and a singularly-unimportant one at that. Exploring it further served no purpose and would not help him deal with his current problem.

As his father Shibi was fond of saying, correlation was not _causation_, and while his experience with sex might be somewhat limited, he certainly didn't remember the actual act leaving him feeling anything like this afterwards, therefore, a _dream_ about sex certainly could not.

And it was definitely a dream. Why? For one thing, the Hokage's _desk_ had figured prominently in some of the bits he could remember, and that was safely back in Konoha.

_And for another, I have a better chance of being selected as the next Kazekage of Sand than getting so much as a sisterly peck on the cheek from Mitarashi-san_-

_Oh Hells. Mitarashi-san_. _Facing her on the way home was going to take awkward to previously unimagined heights_… _Or maybe not_. _Maybe there was such a thing as a critical awkward mass, a point past which things simply could not become more awkward_.

Shino sighed.

_In the garden of life, some people, like Anko, are wildflowers, bold, colorful, and rebelliously _alive. _I, on the other hand, am probably more like an onion_: _Pale, bitter, and mostly hidden under countless layers, each paper thin on their own, but forming_-

"Really, Shino? An awkward onion? You had better be getting sick." The Aburame heir interrupted his own inner monologue. "Why? Because there is no excuse for that terrible, self-pitying metaphor otherwise."

And on that note, Shino headed towards the en suite bath, leaving his pajamas strewn in his wake instead of folding them neatly. A small defiance, he knew, compared to his daydream, but it heartened him nonetheless.

* * *

Some time later, his normally efficient morning routine disrupted somewhat by several breaks to catch his breath, (and the fact that the shower had felt like he was being pelted with senbon) Shino shuffled his way down the hall towards the common room of the inn, following the sound of Anko's laughter.

He found her kneeling at low counter dominating the far side of the dining hall, which seemed deserted besides her and a huge man in a white cook's apron, who was just setting a good-sized plate of dango before the kunoichi. An impressively large number of empty sticks, along with several bottles of sake, littered the counter.

Watching their easy, laughing conversation, compared to his own brief and brusque interactions with Anko, twisted something inside Shino.

As if to provide further contrast to his own desultory condition, Mitarashi-san seemed almost _luminous_ this morning. A picture of joy and contentment from the tips of her spiky hair to the soles of her doubtless perfect feet, she was radiantly beautiful.

_She has amazing breasts too_. _Firm but not disagreeably so, and slightly larger than you'd think, she must bind them_…

The Aburame's hands clenched suddenly in his pockets, ghostly sensations dancing across his palms, phantoms from a memory that was not, and could not be, real.

At that point Anko put a dango stick far enough into her mouth to pull off all three dumplings at once, then slowly slid the now-empty skewer free, an expression of pure bliss on her face, and Shino briefly forgot how to breathe.

As if sensing his attention, the dark-haired woman turned casually, catching sight of her fellow Leaf-nin in the doorway, and the cheery expression faltered, slipping for a beat into the emotionless poker face all ninja were schooled in, before snapping firmly back into place. The interplay took a less than a second, but Shino knew what he'd seen.

_Does she know I was thinking about her breasts_? _About the dream_?

_Possibly_. _Women, are, after all, mysterious_, _kunoichi doubly so_. _But that seems unlikely_. _Why_? _Because Mitarashi_-_san would hardly be the first_, _or even the hundred and first_, _person to give me that look_. _People have been looking as pleased to see me walk into a room as they would be to find a roach in their ramen since my first week at the academy_.

As though compensating, or perhaps over-compensating, for her previous lapse, Anko threw a hand in the air and, her mouth still full of dango, beckoned him vigorously over.

"Mornin' sleepyhead. I was about to have 'em send out a recon team to look for ya."

Mentally, Shino winced. Punctuality was normally something he prided himself on.

"My apologies Mitarashi-san, I fear it has been an… unusual morning."

The Special Jonin frowned at him, brandishing her dango skewer mock-threateningly. At least, Shino hoped it was mock-threateningly.

"I keep tellin' ya kid, ya make me feel like an old lady with that 'Mitarashi-san' crap. And besides, I haven't been here all that long anyway."

With an effort, the Aburaume did _not_ look at the pile of skewers, bottles, and other assorted detritus on the counter behind his temporary teammate.

"And, if I had to put away an extra helping or two of Aoki-kun's excellent dango to pass the time, it wasn't much of a hardship."

The portly cook bowed graciously, and set a covered dish on the counter next to the platter of pastries.

"You are too kind, shinobi-san, to heap such compliments on my unworthy efforts. Unfortunately, I must depart for the market now, but here is your…" There was a pause while the man gave Shino a furtive once-over. "…Friend's breakfast. I hope you will both think well of us, and return when you are next in the area."

Bowing several more times, the rotund chef beat a hasty retreat.

Hesitantly, as if the box were filled with explosive-tagged kunai, Shino reached for the chafing dish containing his breakfast.

_If this dish is full of winter melon on a bed of wild grass_, _I will forgive the universe for the rest of this morning_.

Lifting the lid, the young ninja's heart sank, even as he nearly gagged on the smell that wafted forth. Rather than his hoped-for sweet fruit, in its place sat a heaping plate of stinky, slimy natto, the fermented soybean concoction that was probably his least favorite food in the entire world.

…_Fuck you,_ _universe_.

"Natto." He stated, flatly.

Anko smiled winningly.

"Aoki-kun said it was his specialty, after dango. Said he made the best natto in all of Fire Country. After we put away a few bottles of sake he also said it would put hair on your chest and lead in your pencil, which is why I'm stickin' to these." She gestured with one of her dango sticks. "But you eat up and we'll get going."

"That will be unnecessary, Mita- Anko-san." Shino hastily amended, catching his companion's furrowing brow. "Why? Because I have delayed our return to Konoha enough as it is, and missing one meal is no hardship for a ninja."

Shino's stomach naturally chose that moment to growl loudly enough to frighten people in nearby rooms.

…_And fuck you as well_, _stomach_.

The kunoichi gave a very unladylike snort of laughter in response, and tapped the counter in front of him firmly. Trapped by circumstances, Shino had no choice but to kneel, pick up his chopsticks, and dig in.

"Sit down kid. We're not going anywhere for a little while anyway, this dango's not gonna eat itself…"

The Aburame heir nearly choked on his first, unenthusiastic bite.

_That phrase sounded oddly familiar_. Shino thought, trying to distract himself from the gelatinous mass in his mouth. _But why_?

Five minutes and two failed attempts at conversation later, Shino gradually became aware that his temporary teammate had finished demolishing her, not inconsiderable, remaining supply of dumplings, and shifted her attention directly onto him.

It took him a few more minutes to be sure, but she was definitely watching him eat.

On one level, Shino mused, this was hardly unusual. Eating was one of the few activities that he had to unzip his jacket and remove his mask for, offering otherwise unavailable opportunities to see the lower half of his face. Curious onlookers had been doing this to him since he entered the academy. From what he understood, Team Seven's Kakashi-sensei often received similar treatment.

However, most people fell into fell into one of two categories: The majority tried to be subtle, feigning interest in other subjects while keeping him fixed in their peripheral vision or watching via reflective surfaces.

_Haruno_-_san_, _Akimichi_-_san_, _even some of the instructors_…

There was also a minority that would simply unabashedly stare.

_Kiba_-_kun_, _Uzumaki_-_san_, _when he remembered who I was_, _the academy student team I was briefly in charge of_…

Generally, this was due to whatever ridiculous rumor was making the rounds that week, usually to the effect that his clan had spider fangs, or ant mandibles, or even huge, chakra-sucking, mosquito proboscises, hidden behind their high collars.

About the only people who never stared at him when he ate were Nara-san, who was simply too lazy to be bothered, and Hinata-chan, which he generally put down to her shy nature and refined upbringing, and, in low moments, to the idea that she simply did not care what he looked like.

(The idea that Hinata could look at his face, or indeed, any other part of his, or anyone else's body, any time she so chose, via the byakugan, was a possibility not to be contemplated closely)

Anko however, was not falling into either of these categories. Her aspect, as she sat, body half-turned to face him, idly picking her teeth with one of her dango skewers, was not one of curiosity, but something more like... Non-malicious amusement?

Whatever it was, it was incredibly disconcerting.

"Can I help you, Anko-san?"

Startled from her reverie, the dark-hared woman looked inexplicably guilty for a split-second, before shrugging.

"Oh it's nothing, really. Just that, every meal these last two weeks you've been perfect form, chew every bite thirty-two times guy, and today it's like you went to the Inuzuka school of table manners."

Shino looked down and was shocked to discover that he'd polished off three quarters of his loathsome breakfast in no time at all. He was more shocked by what happened next.

"You've even got some on your face. C'mere." Anko licked her thumb and reached out, gently brushing the offending soy sauce away.

It was the briefest of contacts, innocent, feather-light, over almost before he knew what was happening. Yet Shino could not have been more stunned had Maito Guy suddenly made a dynamic entry through the ceiling and kicked him squarely in the head.

Trying to make sense of what had just happened, the Aburame heir stared at his compatriot, who looked at least as surprised as he felt. A subtle tightening of her jaw and flaring of her nostrils, however, indicated that surprise was rapidly being replaced by something that looked remarkably like… anger?

_Why is she angry_? _Is she angry at me_?

_No_, _you idiot_. _She is angry with_ herself. _Why_? _Because she cannot_ _believe_ _that she touched you_. _That she forgot_, _even for a moment_, _that you were a 'creepy bugfreak'_.

Using every ounce of willpower to keep his expression neutral and movements unhurried, Shino turned away and returned his mask and collar to their usual places.

"Thank you, Mitarashi-san." He said, in an empty, formal voice. Before Anko could respond, he continued in the same manner. "And now I believe we should be on our way. I fear this mission has lasted overlong already, and I am sure you are as anxious as I am to return to Konoha."

The kunoichi set her last dango stick ever so carefully on her plate, and stood, heading for the door without a backward glance.

When she spoke, it was with reserved neutrality that matched Shino's own. Had the current situation not already been so extraordinary, the Aburame probably would have been shocked Anko could even achieve such a subdued tone.

"Just as you say, _Aburame_-_san_. This mission _has_ definitely lasted overlong, and I'm sure we are both equally eager to return home and… put it behind us."

She would not speak again until the two of them reached the main gate of their village.


End file.
